The well known bloggist Geaux_Blue started a diary series this week called "Shunning Wings," wherein he promises to profile various recruits who spurned Michigan. The first candidate is Terrelle Pryor who, for better and for worse, put an indelible mark on both programs, leaving Michigan virtually empty at QB in '08 and resigned to underclassmen for '09-'10, and putting the exclamation mark on Jim Tressell's conservative, unlikeable iteration of the Ohio State program.

Facts: Dude got discounted tats in return for his autograph. He sold off the gold pants lucky charm they give out for beating Michigan. He sold his 2008 Big Ten Championship ring. He sold his Sportsmanship Award from the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.*

Of course, considering how badly we wanted Pryor, and how badly Rich Rod wanted Pryor, we can't pretend like this is a "this is the type of guy other programs recruit" kind of thing.

This is why MGoBlog hasn't made a very big deal of the million minor mishaps accrued each year at various collegiate football programs. Giving a moral "tsk" to a 21-year-old athlete – even if it's way beyond your own "never tell the kids" collegiate transgression list – is hypocritical if you root for an FBS team. And since a million crotchety people with internet connections already do enough of this, it's trite. If ever you find yourself sounding like a Yahoo commenter, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with what you're saying, it's probably wrong (this also goes SEC media types).

And not to mention that the whole thing reeks of the NCAA's worst hypocrisy. This is a tax-exempt organization because it's all for the kids, yet here they are laying out a five-game suspension for selling off the same schwag that OSU itself can't push enough. I can't honestly connect the NCAA's decision to delay suspensions until after the Sugar Bowl to money, but does anyone think having them sit out for MSU next October instead of Arkansas in January was made in the best interests of preserving a spirit of amateurism?

So, how to respond to all of this? A list:

Ohio State fans: Five games for some schlock when Cam Newton was shopped for a fortune?

SEC fans: NCAA's just protecting their golden conference – everyone knows the world revolves around OSU's record versus the SEC in BCS bowls. S-E-C!

I mean, yes to all the caveats above. But this is still our big rival. This guy spurned us. And now he and his buddies are giving the Buckeyes some well-deserved time in the mud. If you're waiting for an official stance on this from MGoBlog, get it out of Brian. As for me, co-sign on any hand gestures toward the NCAA, and otherwise I'm here:**

User bluesouth breaks down the OSU plan in xtranormal form on the boards.

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* I know what you're thinking: They gave him an award for sportsmanship?

** Not a Blue Fan et al. reserve the right to call us their bitches until such time as Michigan beats Ohio State in a contest of football.

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CRISP These Now!

Before 1994 this was registration. After 2000 everything was done online. In between you wanted to kill someone.

If you were at Michigan from about Tom Brady's freshman season to Drew Henson's last, you will remember the CRISP* lady. If not, consider yourself lucky that you have no idea what we're talking about. This was Michigan's phone-based class registration system before it went all internet. Imagine maneuvering through the world's most complicated touch-tone, automated service system. Now imagine the most annoying lady's voice in the world is behind all the recordings (there was a persistent rumor they were after James Earl Jones to re-record it, which I guess they never did because students who thought this was some sort of Death Star Torture device would just starting yelling out the location of the Rebels' secret base). NOW, imagine only 127 people can use it at a time, so you are given a specific time (like 7:03 a.m. to 7:26 a.m.) that you're allowed to call, and while you're fiddling around in the system and it's misreading your inputs, your classes are filling up quickly so you will need to have backups for all of your timeslots and already know their codes. Now imagine they give you rotary dialed phones in all the dorm rooms.

Nowadays if you're interested in a course, you click on it and it fits automatically into your schedule based on parameters such as location to each other, lunch break, drinking nights, and your hall's designated videogame hour, right?

This is all a long way of introducing some courses you ought to pick up:

Course Description: Remember the series BlueSeoul was doing on watching all of MSU (NTMSU)'s games this year? He did two more: The Egg Bowl, and Arkansas (with pics and breakdowns).

The dreaded "inverted option":

We'll be seeing a lot of this play or some variation of it. Although this one isn't really part of their option series, it is third play of their sweep series. (The first 2 being the sweep and the counter sweep.) You can tell that this play is a designed QB keeper by the blocking assignments. It doesn't matter what you call it, Relf will have the ball, and he will be running between the tackles with 1, 2, or even 3 lead blockers.

MSU is in a split back slot right. Ark responds with a 4-3 and a late shift into an outside blitz. The safety moves up into man coverage and the MLB fakes a blitz.

In the comments for the Ole Miss one sammylittle asked BlueSeoul to provide a series summation before the bowl. Co-sign that!

Course Description: In this class you will learn which teams in FBS had the best seasons in a statistical revamp of the rankings system. Essentially it's a new computer poll, and better than some of those that are used for the BCS. Then again, uh, Auburn is 4th. Here's his Top 10:

1

Oregon

1.677444

2

Stanford

1.963008

3

TCU

2.011924

4

Auburn

2.066706

5

Oklahoma

2.25209

6

Boise State

2.321805

7

Wisconsin

2.461991

8

Ohio State

2.473381

9

Missouri

2.555164

10

Virginia Tech

2.564181

Sign up to learn more.

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* C.omputers R.eally I.rritate S.ome P.eople

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More Ohio State

This is a snapshot from this year's edition of The Game, in case you thought that was Fresno State or something opposite Denard and Co. It's also a screenshot from this year's UFR of Ohio State (Not THAT UFR). Unfortunately, Brian seems, for the moment, to be continuing the recent tradition of drowning in sorrow rather than taking the time for a post-OSU Upon Further Review since 2008. This year he didn't even bother with the un-kempt promise, which doesn't bode well for us, but UFR fans may take some solace, for the mighty mighty stubob has stepped up.

I'm still working on getting the charts a bit nicer, but the job is a good one. As Brian or anyone else who've UFR-ed a game will tell you, it's a heck of a job. And stubob did one heck of a job. Diarist of the Week.

This doesn't mean you're off the hook, Cook.

Making Grades

Kicker fail.

It's the end of the semester, which means it's time for report cards. AC1997 has a two-part series giving each position a grade. The position breakdowns are a bit strange, and it's more of a "how do we look next year" than "how did we do this year" kind of thing, but they're good reads and good argument-starters.

Quarterback – A+

That’s right, I went there. I struggle to see how this position could be any better. Denard will be a Heisman candidate for the next two years, Tate has proven to be a very good backup quarterback and spot starter, and Devin will now be a freshman next year and one of the highest ranked dual-threat talents of the past three recruiting classes. I guess it would be nice to have a developmental prospect, but fourth string QBs grow on trees.

The offense's grade was hit severely by the Failure grade at kicker, which I guess is true. I'd much rather he'd just graded '10 and left the '11 predictions for later on.

Season's Spirit

Alternate backgrounds from monuMental, depending on whether you've been naughty or nice. Does wanting to eat the "Nice" one make one naughty? Also, since I'm late in posting this week, here's this week's masterpiece:

I shall leave you with a bit of poetry from SpyinColumbus:'Twas the week before the Gator Bowl, and back in A-squared…

I'll be willing to calculate +/- stats, aka Chart? Chart if people really* want it. I still stand by my original opinion that it isn't very valuable for someone other than Brian to calculate numbers.

I enrolled in 1994. CRISP was bad, waiting in Angell hall was worse. There were no rotary phones in 1994, what do you think it was, the dark ages? It seems that CRISP was the system since the 70's, but 1994 brought PhoneCRISP with the crazy wait times. Before that you had to go to Angell hall and have someone punch in your schedule for you. The James Earl Jones vote was 1997, I think I know some of the guys who tried to get that on the MSA ballot.

There were no rotary phones in 1994, what do you think it was, the dark ages?

In Mosher-Jordan c. 1998-99, it was the Dark Ages. Not only did we have rotary phones, but we lived in a dungeon with asbestos piping, arrow-slits for windows, a moat with bridges, and atop a huge sloping hill with a flat field below it.

I stand by my assertion that Mo-Jo was designed to counter a medieval army (or the Honors College kids in Lloyd, which were much the same thing).

My friends had a "Malkovich" door in their dorm room which led to a small storage space within the walls and roof of Mo-Jo. This being 1994, that room was not used for storage of anything considered legal beyond a black light and some florescent posters. Time sure seemed to stop in there. Antiguity can have its benefits at times...

My friends and I lived in Mo-Jo sophomore year, so 1995. Maybe the pushbutton phones came with the room ethernet drops? Or I could be losing my mind. It happens.

C'mon, what's not to like about a 6 foot tall window that opens 6 inches? Or coming back from break and having all the posters fall off the wall because the hot water registers didn't shut off. Say what you want about Mo-Jo, but at least it wasn't a former hospital like Couzens. Good times.

That picture brought back some bad (pre-1994) memories. I can't imagine how bad the phone system must have been.

- - -

Also ... "Now imagine the most annoying lady's voice in the world is behind all the recordings ..."

No problem -- that would be the recorded voice at Chicago Transit Authority train stations that announces incoming trains. It sounds like one of Marge Simpson's sisters (Patty / Selma) with an upper respiratory infection.

It is so gratifying to me, that other people have worse PTSD from their CRISP experiences than I do. I actually remember doing it at the old Waterman Gymnasium. Which was, like, such a waste of a great place to shoot hoops.

That system sounds better than the system we had at Eastern in my Freshman year. We had to go to Briggs Hall (yes it was named after the same guy that Tigers Stadium was named after at one point) and get punch cards for the classes we wanted. If the class was filled we had to go through the lines again for that class. It took a while to get the classes you wanted. At some point, we got a phone registration which was much much better.

I suppose that it goes back to that first-day-of-LSA-school at Hill Auditorium when the dean of LSA told us that we were there to "learn how to learn." The message, if I got it right, was that rather than necessarily retaining all the "stuff," that we pick up the tools to continually pick up "stuff" throughout life. I guess CRISP was just one example of shit we would never need again. But perhaps it did prepare us for other useless tasking we would later encounter.

Before the phone system, you waited in a mile long line hoping that your class wouldnt' be full. Then when you found out it was full, you would furiously juggle your schedule hoping that you could get what you needed. God that sucked.

Thanks for bringing back my CRISP-induced PTSD. I too am an ancient pre-phoner. In my day (late 70s) they gave you a time to present yourself for registration. It was based alphabetically and rolled each semester, so if you were at the top you'd be at the bottom next time. And if you were at the bottom, of course, hardly any classes would be left open.

My flashback episode involved a time I was pretty high up (hence early). I figured the classes I wanted would be open. One wasn't. I named an alternate. No dice. Another. Closed. I spluttered "you're kidding!" to the lady sitting behind the prehistoric terminal. She looked up over her reading glasses, gave me a look that could dissolve steel, and said the following: "Son, we don't kid here."

On the board, hoping it wouldn't be crossed off behind your back when you waited in that line forever (and scheduling 5 different schedules so you could cover any lost classes and still get Friday off). And that picture, while older, was sadly pretty much how it looked to 1994.

Press seven to disenroll. I was always scared I'd accidentally press this key. Would there be a confirmation prompt? Would they completely remove me from the university? Would I find three men in my dorm room throwing my belongings on the street? Would I be allowed to reapply?

online registration. I would shoot myself in the face if I had to register in person or over the phone. The problems that we have on online registration pales in comparisons to what the students had to go through many years ago before the internet and the commericaliation of laptop/computer.

Fuck, back in the late 70's we used to use signal fires or something like that. I had completely forgotten about it, but now remember coming in there with Plans A-J, trying to avoid that 8 AM Inorganic Chem Class.....

I was at U-M from 87-91, and CRISP only really fucked me fall semester sophomore year and fall semester junior year. My roommate freshman year in East Quad was the son of a regent, and so I was able to get whatever I wanted that year, but he hated my guts and so I was SOL for the rest of my tenure at U-M.

Much thanks for the picture of CRISP Lady. It is exactly how I almost remember it. The memory is fuzzy and black and white - at best. Apparently I am not permanently scarred from the process, because I was able to laugh heartily at the picture. The only thing that really pissed me off about the process was that roommates and hallmates who had AP credits from high school got to register ahead of me. My high school did not yet have AP classes at the time, so I got the shaft.

I was there for the whole mess. At the time you just accepted the phone method because you didn't know any better and it was nice to register and not have to leave home. However, it is amazing it worked.

I think you're a little hard of the Fulmer Cup. Sure, there are some chincey things in there like marijuana possession or the odd disorderly conduct charge. But in the first tagged post in your provided link there is a felony assaulting a police officer charge, a misdemeanor assault charge, and a DUI. I don't know about you, but if I were arrested for any of those things a minor mishap.

And you have to do something to keep you occupied in the offseason, right?

although I was at the university from 85-89, but I think they called it CRISP. I don't remember there being a way to use the phone though, it was just the computer system that was used by the CRISP lady.

But I remember just submitting one list of classes during my time slot, like you had a specific window to show up and wait in line and I would generally go in with my classes, but if there was an issue I'd just fill in the minimum credits with anything that worked. Then I'd go back during the change period and pick all the classes I really wanted.

Of course freshman and sophomore years I purposely took as few of the "standard" classes as everyone else. Poly Sci, Econ, etc. didn't take any of that. It ended up taking Greek Mythology with the Seniors was way cooler because it seemed like the women were way hotter, and in general that was a filler class so seniors could graduate, so it wasn't really that difficult, even though it was a 400 class.

then I transferred into the Engineering School from LSA my junior year, and was behind on my core engineering classes by a year, which meant I signed up for sophomore classes at a junior credit level, so maybe that helped quite on the class competition thing.

but going to change classes was always a breeze, you didn't need a specific time, hardly anyone was there, and it just seemed like the CRISP people were way more relaxed during that time.

I wonder what it is like now that it is online? Is it like trying to get your "zone assignment" on South West Airlines? Man what a stupid freaking system, just give everyone a seat assignment and be done with it already. Well maybe they do get everyone on board the plane faster since everyone is trying to herd in like a bunch of cattle.

I lived at MoJo too, on the top floor, and each fall someone would disturb the bats and they would fly back and forth down the fall trying to find a way to escape.

Good post, although it's my opinion that contending Terrelle Pryor is somehow beyond reproach for his asinine behavior and comments (over the past year particulary) simply because we also recruited him aggressively out of high school is ridiculous. Especially since the quarterback from my alma mater has to date handled himself humbly in good times and bad and hasn't made a name for himself nationally with stupid comments like the ones Pryor made regarding Michael Vick and how he's such a world class quarterback who's only hindrance is the OSU Tressel-ized offensive gameplan (the latter of which was of course efficiently and thoroughly statistically debunked by this very blog). I have said numerous times this year how glad I am that Pryor doesn't represent my school and I continue to feel that way, win or lose. It also isn't hard for me to connect the dots between delaying the suspensions and money. If the star players play, people watch the bowl. If they don't, viewership/revenue goes way, way down. End of story. But, most importantly, I too fondly remember my 20 minute CRISP window and frantically checking the course guide in line for a still open 3 credit class that wouldn't require getting up before 11am. GO BLUE!

Thanks for reminding me about the only time(s) in my life I wanted to rip a phone out of the wall and stomp it into oblivion. My father's horror stories about enrolling in-person in the '70s will be combined into my CRISP horror stories, to be passed down to my first-born son. My guess is if he decides to go to U-M, he can use telepathy to enroll.

Also, I think there was an op-ed in the Daily that outlined what the revamped registration process would look like, when the rumors about JEJ doing the voiceover were flying around.